To the Mom Whose Child Gets Sick at Christmas
Christmas! The most wonderful time of the year!
Until it isn’t.
Midnight fevers, stuffy noses, croupy coughs and glassy eyes are just a few of the things that might disrupt your well laid plans. Soon the packed calendar turns into missed events, canceled plans and quiet evenings of temperature taking and sad-child soothing.
In Every Moment Holy we are reminded that even the most mundane, inconvenient, and disruptive of tasks can be used to point our gaze toward Christ and remind us of the hope of the gospel.
And so I offer this small service to you, O Lord,
for you make no distinction between those acts
that bring a person the wide praise of their peers
and those marked acts that are accomplished in a quiet obedience without accolade.
You see instead the heart, the love, and the faithful stewardship of all labors, great and small.Excerpt from A Liturgy for Domestic Days in Every Moment Holy
Even as I type this, I’ve got a child in bed not feeling well. The rest of our family is off doing one of our favorite holiday traditions while I am here caring for her. So I’m preaching the gospel to myself and imagining you reading this while rocking your own sick baby.
Here’s what I want us both to remember:
- This moment of caregiving is fertile ground for the gospel to take deeper root and grow sweeter fruit in our lives.
- This moment of caregiving is what makes Christmas so beautiful.
- This moment of caregiving is why Jesus came to earth in the form of a baby – Immanuel, God with us.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:5-7
Christmas isn’t the most wonderful time of the year because of all the traditions and events on our calendar. Christmas is wonder-filled because of what happened that first Christmas when Jesus chose to leave heaven behind and put on a flesh that got sick, tired, fevered, and needy.
Jesus was once rocked by his mother late into the night. Jesus once had fevers that caused her to worry and ask her relatives for advice. Jesus once had glassy eyes, a runny nose and a contagious cough.
These moments of caregiving can remind us of the extraordinary steps God went through to save us from our sin-entangled lives. Jesus made flesh. Jesus dwelling among us. Jesus afflicted by grief and carrying our sorrows (Isaiah 53:3,4).
As we gaze at the faces of our sick children, we know they can’t heal themselves. They can’t fix their illness. Many of them can’t even blow their own nose! Recognizing their neediness can remind us of how needy we are as well. Not just for our own physical healing at times, but of our most urgent problem: our entanglement with sin. Caring for our children reminds us that we too are desperate to be cared for, healed, forgiven and made new.
Precious momma, Christmas can become more beautiful in these caregiving moments as our gaze drifts to Christ: his sacrifice, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection. God put on flesh to perfectly care for us.
And may your child recover quickly, and may the Lord spare the rest of your household from the spread of germs!
2 Comments
Jana
I love this. I found out this week that a friend’s granddaughter is losing her cancer battle. And I’m weeping for her. She reads your blog. She and her daughter are both believers. I don’t know if they will read this as they are both spending all their time in the ICU with Nicole. I love you and am grateful that you are listening to God’s call to write for the weary.
Marissa
Sweet Nicole – praying for all of you now.